The Prairie Is A Part Of Our Heritage

For as long as we have lived in the Red River Valley of the North, people have relied upon the wealth of the prairie. Great herds of buffalo provided food, shelter, and clothing for the Plains and Woodland Indians. Medicine came from plants. What people needed, the prairie gave.

As European settlers began appearing in Dakota Territory about 125 years ago, they put up sod houses with stout walls built of nothing but earth and grass. They grew bumper crops of wheat in the freshly turned prairie soil - it was a virtual bank of the building blocks necessary for life. In this way, the Red River Valley became an agrarian landscape of farmsteads and tree claims, pastures and fields of wheat, steepled churches and elevators that shine china-white in the morning sun. The Red River Valley became America's agricultural heartland, and generations of farm families worked its black loam - a heritage is as rich as the soil. Today, the valley continues to evolve; it is an epicenter of an incredibly productive and efficient industrial agriculture. In this changed landscape, however, the native grasslands have vanished almost completely.

To some, this prairie is God's Country. By any name, prairie stirs something in the soul - this is one way in which the prairie has sustained us. Grand Forks County Prairie Partners is a nonprofit group that hopes to preserve what is left of the prairie in the Red River Valley.

To preserve prairie is to celebrate the place from which we've come, and it is a way to give something back to the landscape that nurtures our communities.